The demand for impeccable wireless routers is becoming a norm, thanks to the continuous growth in the products that are connected to the internet at all times. Smartphones, smart televisions, laptops, and desktops; all of these are always connected to the internet. Keeping that in mind, having a wireless router that can easily handle the load is an essential part.

When it comes to choosing a new wireless router, there are a couple of things that you must keep in mind in order to have a smooth buying experience; things like the area you are planning to have the coverage on, the amount of people that will be using the router and how many networks will be connected to it.

Wireless routers are available in a variety of types, they can range from top-tier, most expensive ones to the cheaper, more cost effective ones that will suit your needs if you don’t intend to put too much pressure it.

Keeping in mind the consumers and their needs, we have narrowed down the list of 15 best router 2018. The list includes wireless routers from almost every price group, this not only gives the buyer a diversity but also a better judgement on what they desire.

When it comes to Google, we normally recognize the company as someone who has created the best search engine there is, who has created Android, and who is also known for creating the Pixel lineup of phones, as well as notebooks. The fact that Google is pretty much everywhere is something that we can’t deny.

Although it may have surprised us if Google wasn’t so popular, but when the company came up with their Google WiFi System, we weren’t really surprised to be honest. Thrill is the word you’re looking for. You see, WiFi systems normally consist of 3 or more routers that are rather small in size and are spread across the building.

This is done in order to create a blanket of wireless connectivity, ensuring that the WiFi is available in almost all the corners of the building. Needless to say, Google wasn’t the first one doing this as this approach has been taken by other companies but it was certainly a good thing to do.

Before we even began the entire testing progress, we had figured out that Google’ has done a great job with their WiFi system, so once we were done hooking up everything, the tests went rather well. The good thing is that the WiFi System is a breeze to install with easy to set up procedure, you also good some of the best wireless coverage, and amazing speeds.

The units are small, and look absolutely great, plus, thanks to their size, you can just put them anywhere you want without them really coming in the way of how you have arranged certain aspects of your room, or the place you’re putting the units.

With that said, it’s safe to say that when it comes to performance not a lot of mesh systems can actually come close to what Google WiFi is offering. However, it’s necessary to keep in mind that it all comes at a cost. For starters, in order to setup the system and get it running, you’re going to need a Google account, and an Android phone.

Other that, another downside perhaps is the fact that you don’t get a lot of customization or advanced options. If you’re okay with these tiny setbacks, then you should know that the Google WiFi is perhaps the best WiFi system in the market at the time of writing this review, and that is a huge claim.

First things first. Linksys WRT1900AC and Linksys WRT1900ACS are the two different routers from Linksys that look the same. Same color, the same number of antennas, same number of ports. They look exactly the same. Which is not a bad thing because this router features the iconic design of Linksys’s old WRT54G wireless router which was the favorite router of modding community. With this router, Linksys wants to bring back the old glory when 10 years ago WRT series was the best router available in the market. The new router also shares a stackable design of the old WRT series.

Linksys also makes switches that are stackable on top of this router so you can expand your wired network without having to worry about space or heat problem. There are not three, but four antennas on this router. This doesn’t mean that this router is a 4×4 router. It is still a 3×3 router but 4 antennas are always better than three. The 4 antennas work together to enable beamforming technology which actually locates where the devices actually are and then direct signals towards them.

All the differences are from inside. The very first difference that you can see inside is that the old one has a fan and new one doesn’t. This doesn’t mean that the new one is going to run hot or may encounter a problem under heavy load. This is due to the new dual-core 1.6 GHz power efficient chip which runs cool even under heavy loads. This router also has 512mb of DDR3 memory.

This router has the top sustained speed (in real-world usage) of around 600Mbps. When paired with an external hard drive, this router offers by far the fastest NAS performance ever seen (in a router). This router can go up to 75 MBps of writing and more than 100 MBps of reading from the attached storage. These numbers put this router among many high-end dedicated NAS servers.

On the front of the router, you get the usual fancy array of lights to tell you whats going on with the router. On the back of the router, there are 4 Gigabit LAN ports, 1 Gigabit WAN port, It also has a 1 USB 3.0 port and a 1 USB 2.0 port which also doubles as an eSATA port for faster storage and sharing.

I love these activity lights but if you don’t, you can always turn them off in the routers web interface. The web interface is very same to the Linksys recent routers. It comes with a very nice QoS control feature, fancy network map, and a handy speed test utility to check internet speeds. You can name your guest network to your liking which was not possible on the previous model. Other neat features, such as dynamic DNS, parental controls, port-forwarding are also available on this router and they are easy to use. Finally, you also have the option to use the Linksys SmartWifi app to manage your routers settings from even a mobile or tablet.

In short, This router kicks some serious buts, it has the longest range of all the wireless routers and offers excellent wifi speeds and stability even on the far ends. This is the almost perfect router for any home. This is the router that most tech-savvy people will be looking forward to due to its support for OpenWRT, DD-WRT and other open-source firmware and mods.

As a dual band router it has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz connectivity, but the more savvy amongst you might have noticed this is labeled as an AC3100 router, whereas most AC routers with four antennae are merely AC1900, so what’s the deal? The deal is the RT-AC88U uses a Broadcom chipset that offers a feature called NitroQAM, which allows for higher bandwidth than just regular AC as long as you’re pairing it with a compatible adapter such as this one from Asus. It boots the total bandwidth available from 1732Mb/s to 2,167Mb/s, which is a 25 percent boost.

The RT-AC88U is an impressive router, but it is a bit expensive for what is essentially a dual-band AC1900 router. It’s very fast overall though, and has great admin software both on the desktop and for mobile devices, and I like that it has gaming-specific Quality of Service too. It’s a slick package. The fact that is has eight LAN ports is interesting, but I doubt most home users would ever need that many, so it seems like a waste of money. If you pick one up won’t be disappointed, but there are less expensive options with similar performance and features.

The NETGEAR Nighthawk X10 AD7200 Smart Wi-Fi Router is for those looking to have the best VR gaming and 4K video streaming experience. It doesn’t come cheap though. This behemoth of a router will make your pockets lighter by over $400!

In all fairness, this router does offer an awful lot for the price! In addition to supporting three Wi-Fi bands (2.4 GHz, 5.0 GHz, and 60 GHz), it has 7 Gigabit Ethernet ports (6 LAN, 1 WAN) along with a 10 Gigabit SPF+ LAN port. On top of that, it features Multi-User Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) data streaming, and 160 MHz Wi-Fi technology which doubles the Wi-Fi speeds to mobile devices.

The Nighthawk X10 is one of the best home routers you can splurge on right now. However, this router has many features that are yet to be supported by devices. Most devices don’t support the 160 MHz Wi-Fi, and very few PCs are available with 802.11 AD network cards.

To sum it up, the Nighthawk X10 is like an electric car. It’s the future, but in today’s limited infrastructure, it will not perform to the highest potential.

6. Linksys Max-Stream AC4000 MU-MIMO Wi-Fi Tri-Band Router (EA9300)

The EA9300 is not the highest end router from Linksys, that title still belongs to EA9500.

Instead, the EA9300 is the successor to the EA9200 which was launched more than two years ago.

Despite not being the highest end router, the EA9300 is the most powerful one because of its 1.8GHz quad-core processor, 512MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM.

While the EA9500 retails for S$539, the EA9300 cost S$140 lesser at S$399. The lower price brings about, the more powerful processor, more RAM, and ROM. You may be wondering why. The reason being instead of a 4×4 MU-MIMO (4 simultaneous streams) design found in the EA9500, the EA9300 only has a 3×3 MU-MIMO (3 simultaneous streams).

Because of that, the speeds also decrease. From 1,000Mbps to 750Mbps on the 2.4GHz and from 2,166Mbps to 1,625Mbps on both 5.0GHz.

The Archer lineup from TP-Link spans from the Archer C2 at AC750 to the Archer C5400 using the latest tri-band AC5400 tech. The Archer C3150 in-house today sits near the top of TP-Link’s massive router lineup as a dual-band Wave 2 solution.

The C3150 too has been updated with a second revision of its hardware, an update that has brought it HomeCare capabilities, the same as the C5400 we recently reviewed. That said, the C3150 is a dual-band solution supporting NitroQAM and 1000 Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and 2167 Mbps on the 5GHz band. It matches up perfectly with our test platform using the same AC3100 technology, so it will be interesting to see how this solution performs.

The TP-LINK AC3150 (Archer C3150) WiFi Router offers a wealth of benefits by incorporating a plethora of advanced features into a compact, easy to use design that’s ideal for anyone looking to increase the speed, range and reliability of your wireless Internet connection. Offering speeds up to 3150 Megabits per second, you’re assure lag-free online gaming and latency-free 4k high definition video streaming for multiple devices at once.

By incorporating 4-Stream and NitroQAM to work cohesively together, all data is processed much more efficiently than most other wireless routers in the same price range. It’s really nice to see so much thought put into the design, with the inclusion of a 1.4 Ghz dual core CPU that’s paired with two co-processors.

It’s truly difficult to find anything technically wrong with it. It seems that each feature and specification was well thought out, and TP-LINKreally took the extra time to perfect it. The price tag may seem like the biggest hurdle to get over, but for most – a high-performance wireless router should never be overlooked if you want to get the most out of your network and Internet access.

8. D-Link AC3200 Ultra Tri-Band Wi-Fi Router (DIR-890L/R)

The next up on our list is one of the top tier wireless routers from D-Link. For those who don’t know, the company has a long history of providing some of the best networking products and the AC3200 Ultra Wi-Fi DIR-890 isn’t here to tell a different story. It’s perhaps one of the most stylish looking wireless routers we have encountered. Where the Nighthawk resembled a stealth jet, the DIR-890 looks like race car enthusiasts built it. But looks aren’t everything, right? Let’s find out how this router fairs in things that matter.

The DIR-890 is a fantastic router regarding speed and functionality.

Testing revealed that the router is fast, easy to setup and use. It also has a good speed/range when using this device for Wi-Fi. Another great thing about this router is that it comes with the ability to be doubled up as a NAS by adding an external hard drive.

9. NETGEAR R7900-100NAS Nighthawk X6 AC3000 Smart Wi-Fi Router.

NETGEAR Nighthawk X6 AC3000 is a tri-band router delivers more Wi-Fi for more devices. So, it can handle three times the number of connections than a single-band router ever could. If you have more than one device in your house, and we believe you have too. Nighthawk X6 help you never slow down, no matter how many things you have, no matter how many televisions, how many computers how many PCs, how many tablets, whatever you’re streaming or downloading plus friends who visit your house.

Inside equipped with the powerful dual-core 1GHz processor and three offload processors provide Wi-Fi speeds up to 3.0Gbps. Nighthawk’s Tri-Band Wi-Fi multiplies the intensity of immersive, uninterrupted, online gaming while Dynamic Qu’s prioritizes Internet traffic by application & device. Streaming Nighthawk X6 multiplies the entertainment factor for everyone in your home. Seamless, simultaneous streaming for multiple devices is now a reality thanks to powerful Tri-Band Wi-Fi and features like Smart Connect and Beamforming+—it’s the end of buffering, jittery video, and lag as you know it.

Dynamic Qu’s prioritizes your Wi-Fi bandwidth by application, such as Netflix as well as by device for smoother streaming. A built-in DLNA-ready server and iTunes server add to your media enjoyment, allowing you to play and share your videos and music quickly and easily. And to keep your media both safe and instantly accessible, you can use the free Ready SHARE Vault app for automatic, continuous backup of all your home PCs wirelessly, to the USB hard drive connected to the router super-speed USB 3.0 port.

The router is an oft-overlooked part of a home computing setup. A slow network has the power to bring even the highest-end PC to a crawl, and troubleshooting a wireless network is a vague and frustrating process.

Sure, there are routers like Google’s OnHub that make the process easy, and provide excellent coverage, but in particular for gaming, there’s a thin line between optimum performance and crushing defeat. Netgear’s Nighthawk line has always gone above and beyond in network performance, and the new X8 is no exception.

The 802.11ac router is capable of 5.3Gbps of total Wi-Fi bandwidth across three channels, and it doesn’t stop there. The Nighthawk X8 is packed with almost every feature imaginable in a router. It has beamforming and MU-MIMO; it’s a DLNA and FTP server; it can run VPN utilities; and it offers security features like DoS protection and a built-in firewall.

All of that functionality doesn’t come cheap, and the Nighthawk X8’s $400 price tag is going to be an immediate turn-off for a lot of users. Can the X8 keep a steady course in the rough waters of stormy network demands, or is it a shipwreck waiting to happen?

Conclusion

Wireless standards are mostly backward compatible so you should not worry about that if your router will work with your existing or new devices or if it will not at all, instead all you should care is how to get the most out of your wireless router. Wireless networking depends on protocol overhead, distance, and obstacles between client and access point.

If you only surf the internet and check email or watch some Netflix, then investing 300$ in a wireless router might not be a good idea for you. But if you are someone who is constantly looking to transfer a lot of files over your local network, monitor traffic, set rules on your network, and maybe like to manage your network from outside, then investing in a good wireless router is probably the best purchase.

If you are also into expanding your network over a wired connection to ensure more stability and performance then you can invest into a high-speed network switch to add more high-speed ethernet devices to your network.

If you invest in a good router, its boring but in good ways: easy to set-up and it just works all the time. As we already have explained specifically that which router is best for what kind of conditions and needs, you just need to pick up the best router for your needs and go Buy that wireless router

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About

Hi there, I’m K Tien , founder and chief editor at Flatworlds.net. Our mission is to provide you with best laptop advice and information, that’s why I created this blog to share with you. It is a collection of laptop and our personal tips learned through both years of experience and thorough research. So, welcome aboard!